


The Derivation of Latin Verbs

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Series: Raising Teddy [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birthday, Camping, Family, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Hogwarts, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: “What’s erecto mean?” Teddy asks, wrinkling his nose.





	The Derivation of Latin Verbs

**Author's Note:**

> More Teddy being an adorable bean! Thank you to Hogwartsfirebolt and Gem in the discord for the prompts, they really helped! And to everyone else for enjoying the first two, which you don’t need to read to enjoy this one :)

“Erecto.” 

Blaise smirks, pointing his wand at Harry rather than the mess of tent poles on the ground. Harry chucks one of the tent pegs not quite _at_ Blaise, but rather near his feet, where it lands beside his expensive loafers. They look extremely out of place in a muddy field, but so does Blaise, so Harry supposes it’s alright. 

“What the hell would you have done if that had worked?” Harry says, exasperated, and then, “Don't answer that, actually.”

Blaise throws back his head and laughs loudly. 

“What’s erecto mean?” Teddy asks, wrinkling his nose. He’s unzipped his suitcase on the grass despite Harry telling him not to, and Harry watches as he rifles through his neatly-folded shorts and t-shirts to find the packet of sweets that Harry saw Blaise hide in there earlier. He’s like a bloody niffler for anything sweet.

“I’ll let you handle this one,” Harry tells Blaise, in a monotonous voice. Blaise winces, attempting to turn back to the tent, but Harry stands and chivvies him away and starts putting it together himself. He’d gotten good at putting up tents during his time spent in hiding, but it’s something of a relief when it’s not as easy as he remembers. 

“Erecto,” Blaise says grandly, hiding his discomfort behind a philosophical air, “derives from the Latin verb erigere, which means “to erect.” This transfers into modern-day terms to mean the putting up of a tent.” 

Teddy stands up mid-way into Blaise’s explanation and runs off through the grass, his sweets clasped tightly in his fingers. Blaise stops speaking, highly affronted, blinking at Teddy’s swiftly shrinking form. Harry stifles a laugh against the back of his hand. 

“Children do have a way of cutting you off at the knee and utterly destroying your ego, don’t they?” Blaise mutters, but there’s a soft smile on his face as he watches Harry give in and laugh properly. 

“Your face,” Harry says, wheezing a little. He finds himself laughing more and more often lately, around Blaise and Teddy. 

“It is a thing of beauty, isn’t it?” Blaise agrees, touching his own cheek. 

Harry keeps laughing. 

“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying yourself, Potter,” Blaise says drily. He picks up Teddy’s suitcase, cramming everything back inside, and starts carrying it over to the newly-erected tent. “You may want to catch that fiend before he tries to climb into next door’s caravan.” 

Harry whips around to find Teddy making a beeline for the open door of the caravan on the pitch opposite them. There’s an elderly woman snoozing in the folding chair under an awning, but Harry has no doubts that Teddy will soon put a stop to that. He starts running, the sound of Blaise’s laughter fading into the background.

“It’s my birfday weekend,” Teddy complains, when Harry finally catches up and hoists him over his shoulder, throwing an apologetic look at the startled, sleepy woman. “I get to do things I want to do.” 

“Who told you that?” Harry asks, jostling Teddy slightly and crinkling the packet of sweets against his back. 

“Uncle Ron,” Teddy says. His hand is fisted in Harry’s shirt, his head lolling around near his shoulder blades. 

“Of course he did,” Harry mutters. He sighs, and says, louder, “What’s the rule?” 

Teddy mimics his sigh, only his seems a thousand times heavier and more pained than Harry’s. “If Grandma doesn’t gonna like it, don’t do it.” 

Harry has no idea if Andromeda knows she’s being used as a threat, but he doesn’t think she’d mind too much. 

Teddy starts squirming then, trying to get down, so Harry sets him down on the grass and leads him over to the tent, where Blaise’s arse is sticking out of the tent flap. It’s quite a fine arse, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the amount of swear words emitting from inside the tent as he tries to pump up the airbed without a wand. 

“Incoming,” Harry calls, but it’s too late, and Teddy starts reeling off the swear words as he skips over to Blaise and vaults onto his back, all to the horror of the family just getting out of their car in the pitch beside them. 

*

Teddy’s birthday isn’t until the Sunday, but that means absolutely nothing with a five-year-old, which is why they’re currently spending the whole weekend camping in a Muggle tent, at a campsite further down the country. 

“Do you think he’s going to get bored?” Blaise asks, as he props himself up in one of the folding chairs. 

Harry, who’s busy creating a fortress out of blocks so that Teddy’s robot can knock it down, snorts with amusement. “You packed enough toys to keep a whole army of children occupied, and I saw you Transfiguring those mugs into toy cars earlier. He’s going to get spoilt, and I’m not raising a little Malfoy.”

“Well I should hope not,” Blaise says, looking delighted at the new ammunition. “Although that would explain so much, Harry, my darling, treacherous lover, if you’re sneaking out behind my back to raise your Malfoy love-child. Tell me, is the obsession creeping back in?”

Harry is saved from answering _that_ when Teddy crashes into the bricks with a loud _nyoom,_ spilling toys into Harry’s lap. He grins toothily up at Harry and clambers over the mess to jump in his lap, accidentally cracking him over the head with the robot. 

“Careful, darling,” Blaise calls, but he’s grinning as Harry slams his watering eyes shut. 

“Where’s my present? Why’s it not here?” Teddy asks, trying to scramble up onto Harry’s shoulders. Harry latches onto a flailing leg to avoid getting kicked in the nose, and yanks until Teddy tumbles safely into his lap.

“It’s hidden,” Harry says, pushing Teddy’s fringe back out of his eyes. “You need a haircut.”

“Do not,” Blaise says, in a haunted voice, “ask me to do it again.”

Harry bites his lip to keep from spluttering with laughter, pretending to catch Teddy’s tongue when it pokes out at him instead. Teddy shrieks and rolls away, crawling across the grass. The robot remains behind, abandoned amongst the rubble of colourful blocks. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Harry says. “I kind of figured you’d think of something a bit more fashionable than a bowl-cut though. Seeing as you’re so trendy.”

Blaise’s words, not his, but they work all the same to make Blaise scowl. 

“We are far enough away from all your Gryffindor friends that nobody would be able to save you, Potter,” Blaise says, throwing a pleasant smile and a wave at a passing couple.

*

“This is perhaps the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in my life, and that includes all the times I’ve sat between my mother and her various lovers at dinner,” Blaise says. He wriggles around on the airbed, which of course makes Harry vault up into the air beside him. He throws a hand out and smacks Blaise in the side until Blaise reluctantly lies still. It’s dark and a little humid in the tent, but he can hear Teddy’s soft snores from the pod on the other side of the main pod - Teddy insisted on having his own grown-up boys bedroom - and Harry feels comfortable despite the growing temperature. 

“Seriously, how on earth are you half-asleep already?”

Harry yawns, tucking himself further in under the covers. “This is nothing. I used to sleep in a cupboard.”

Blaise goes stiff and silent beside him. There’s a moment of silence in which Harry hazily wonders whether he should have spoken, before Blaise says, “Pardon?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Harry says. “A bit small, but so was I.” 

“You slept,” Blaise says slowly, “in a cupboard.” 

Harry knows he should probably be a little worried about that tone of voice, but he’s half-asleep and as comfortable as someone can be on a blow-up bed, so he just slings an arm over Blaise’s stomach and shuffles closer, drifting off. 

Blaise sighs. Harry can feel the tension slip off him, and he pulls Harry up against him and presses a kiss to his hair. 

“We’re talking about this in the morning, love,” Blaise murmurs. 

They do not talk about it in the morning, but they will talk about it later. They do not talk about it in the morning, because in the morning, Teddy quietly unzips the tent pod and launches himself at Blaise’s prone form, kneeing him in the groin, and promptly expelling any thoughts of conversation out of Blaise’s ears. Harry winces and wrangles Teddy off Blaise while he whines and weeps, and sits up them both up, legs tangled in the quilt. 

“Why is Blaise making that sound?” Teddy peers curiously at Blaise, who’s doubled up and groaning, and Harry sighs and sits Teddy properly in his lap. 

“Because you just crushed my…” Blaise pauses. “My valuables.”

Teddy nods seriously. “Grandma has valu-bobbles. They’re in her cabinet. Why are yours in your pants?” 

Harry ducks his head to hide his strained laughter into Teddy’s hair, which largely resembles a birds nest. Blaise catches on though, and Harry receives a small, discrete pinch to the thigh that has him rolling both him and Teddy away, much to Teddy’s delight. Teddy shrieks happily as Harry pretends to squash him underneath him, letting out loud, fake snores. 

“Breakfast time, heathens,” Blaise says, taking big, wobbly steps over them on the airbed. “I’m making bacon.” 

“With the fire!” Teddy yells, squirming out from under Harry and scrambling towards the main tent flap. 

“We have a camping stove,” Harry calls, but he resigns himself to having to get up and supervise breakfast as both his toddler and his incredibly attractive pirate lover disappear outside. He yawns, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair as he slips on some shoes, just in case he has to chase an unruly child around. He can hear Blaise’s warm laughter and Teddy’s babbling, the occasional thready note from a childish song being thrown around, and the crackle of a fire. He smiles as he grabs plastic cups and plates from the bag under the folding table, and heads out into the sunshine with his family. 

*

“I promise, it’s not that deep.” 

Teddy makes a highly suspicious, doubtful sound. He’s clinging to the wall of the swimming pool, still on the steps, with water up to his knees. A pair of blue boardies covered in crabs cover the little bruise on his thigh he got from tripping over a tent peg and landing on one of Blaise’s loafers, which were then Vanished during a bout of accidental magic. He’s got armbands on, a pair of goggles on his head, and a rubber ring with a donut design on it around his middle. Harry’s also cast several Floatation Charms, and yet Teddy still won’t go further than a few inches above his knees. 

Blaise drifts closer, lounging on a lilo. Harry glares at his stylish red shorts and attractively glistening hair. The rest of the families seem to have miraculously buggered off, and if Blaise’s smug grin and conjured cocktail are anything to go by, he has something to do with it. 

“You could at least help me,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. 

Blaise opens one eye lazily and shrugs. “We can’t make him swim. My mother taught me to swim by launching me into the pond in our garden. Of course, it was a magical pond, so it was clean and I wouldn’t have drowned anyway, but I didn’t know that.” 

Harry blinks at him, and then turns to Teddy. He’s going to unpack that later, when they have a moment alone. 

“I promise not to make you go any further than you want to, but it’s nice out here. You get to float around and pretend to be a fish.” 

Teddy scrunches his face up, clinging stubbornly to the wall. “I don’t want to be a fish.”

“How about a shark?” Blaise asks, squinting at them over the rim of his expensive sunglasses. “A Manta Ray? An electric eel? Or perhaps a giant squid, one that gobbles up all Harry Potter’s in the water?” 

Teddy giggles mischievously, glancing at Harry, eyes alight. “Your name is pooper. Harry _Pooper._ ”

Harry raises his eyes skyward as a chorus of little snickers goes up. He dunks his head under the water so he doesn’t have to hear his name being chanted, incorrectly, and when he comes back up, Teddy eyes his wet hair before suddenly throwing himself under the water. 

Harry wheezes, making a seizing motion as he scrambled to grab his flailing kid. He hears a splash and a curse as Blaise fumbles his drink on the lilo, but Teddy pops back up thanks to the spells and Harry’s arms, and grins at them, blinking water out of his eyes and coughing a little. 

“I like it,” Teddy says, kicking his legs to make the water splash about and trying to dunk himself again. “It’s like being in the bath and making waves but only better ‘cause there’s no soap.” 

Harry lets his racing heart calm down while he guides Teddy along, but it turns out Teddy is part fish. He glides through the water as well as a small child can, making huge splashes when he wants to and laughing and shrieking when Harry has to dodge the sprays of water. 

“If there was no roads and just water, we could swim to Grandma’s every day if we wanted,” Teddy tells him, as they bob down the length of the pool. His cheeks are starting to go a little red from the sun, so Harry gently guides him back towards the steps while making enthusing, interested sounds.

He wraps Teddy in a towel and plops a hat on his head, smearing suncream on his cheeks while Teddy dances and wriggles on the spot. Blaise floats a little closer, clearly sun-drunk as he smiles up at Harry, and Harry settles Teddy on the deckchair with a bowl of watermelon and a wink, before casting a silent levitation charm at Blaise’s drink. 

He gets the honour of seeing Blaise’s eyes widen with dawning horror when he stands and makes a running leap towards him, and Teddy’s laughter only sweetens the moment. 

*

“Why is that tree shaved and that one's not?” Teddy yells. He’s cycling slowly through the woods that line the edge of the campsite, pointing at random trees and bushes in between giant shouts of glee. Stabilising charms are in place, and Harry walks with his hands in his pockets, smiling to himself as Blaise walks along behind Teddy, hands fastened to the back of the seat. He has to walk like a hunchback to be able to reach the seat, but he hasn’t complained, or let go. 

Blaise takes a look at the furry tree and snorts. “Maybe it’s cold, or maybe it’s giving the patriarchy the finger, as Aunty Pansy would say.”

“Can I say that too?” Teddy says, frowning down at his feet as he tries to pedal. “Can I? Don’t let go!” 

“No you can’t,” Blaise says, and then his voice softens, growing warm and quiet in a way that echoes exactly how Harry feels. “Of course I won’t. I told you I wouldn’t let go, okay? You’re not going to crash while I’m here.” 

“You’re not going to crash at all,” Harry calls, when Teddy whips his head over his shoulder to argue, and no doubt to check that Blaise isn’t lying. Blaise glances back at him, his smile soft with amusement and contentment. 

“Of course not,” Blaise says. “No accidents today, not when there’s cake back at the tent.” 

Teddy gasps, almost wheeling off into the underbrush in his excitement. Harry snorts and jogs a little to catch up. They did presents early this morning, at seven o’clock, and watching Teddy rip the wrapping paper off his new bike and broom with wide eyes and a bright grin gave Harry a funny, scary feeling in his chest. It’s terrifying, to be responsible, not just for the care of a small child, but also the happiness of one. 

A birthday breakfast had followed the presents, including crumpets and toast with jam and cereal in little plastic bowls. Teddy had pinned his badge to his pyjama top with pride, and Harry had pulled him close while he spooned Cheerios into his mouth and kissed his head. When he’d glanced up, Blaise had been watching him over their feast with something tender in his eyes, and that had scared him too. 

It’s a good sort of fear, Harry thinks, as he moves to press his hands over Teddy’s small fingers on the handlebars, smiling encouragingly down at a pair of now-green eyes. Not the bad kind of fear that had followed him around for years when he was younger, the kind that made him scared for his life and his friends and his mind and his home. This is fear that he can live with, because he knows it isn’t really fear at all, but the deepest, most heart-warming love that he knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Not pictured: Teddy climbing out of a pool, marching towards Harry and kicking his soaking wet swimming trunks right into Harry’s face, before running away, naked and laughing. This happened to me today and I still haven’t recovered tbh. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought! Hope you liked it! Thank you! <3


End file.
